Cell 211 (Daniel Monzon, 2009)

7/10
Cell 211 is a 2009 Spanish film that's finally making its way overseas, after cleaning up at the Goya Awards (8 wins, 15 nominations). Juan, a prison guard touring the facilities the day before he begins his new job there, gets caught in a massive riot and has to pretend to be an inmate to survive. Between Juan's interactions with the current prison hierarchy (led by the imposing Malamadre), the negotiators, wardens and prison officials trying to get him out, memories of his pregnant wife back at home, and the three Basque terrorists inside the prison whose presence complications negotiations and extraction considerably, the story is never lacking meat. Some suspension of disbelief is required to make the plot hum along, but it does so well enough, and the subtle character shifts generally keep you guessing at their motives or allegiances. The acting is great even when the dialogue suffers which helps a lot but for a movie with something as dramatic as a prison riot at its heart, I didn't feel much tension or suspense the entire way through. But it's smart and well-acted enough to entertain, and it's not much of a surprise to learn that an English-language remake is in the works.

Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011)

6.5/10
After watching Moneyball, it's really not a surprise to read that so many essential roles (principal actors, screenwriters, the director) were changed and replaced in production. It's a messy movie that lacks the thing it needs most - a singleminded, assured direction. It combines archive footage and recreated scenes awkwardly, a dramatic race to a achieving an MLB record is shoehorned in almost as an afterthought, and intertitles start appearing out of nowhere almost halfway through the movie ("Trade Deadline", etc). Not to mention that many of the scenes collide against eachother almost as skits played one after another, rather than a logical cinematic narrative. And I still didn't get to the inclusion of Billy Beane's daughter, nowhere to be found in the book: Hollywood's lame, cloying attempt at "humanizing" a character who doesn't need it.
All that said, the movie isn't a total loss - it's quite funny at times. Brad Pitt is great, and he has excellent chemistry with Jonah Hill, also very good himself. It's never a chore to watch, even if it does feel overlong at 2.5 hours. Overall though, I think the biggest problem was the movie missing the mark in conveying just how revolutionary Sabremetrics was at the time, and how much of an impact Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta really had on the sport. You couldn't fault someone for coming out of the movie thinking, "so all that and they never really won anything? Who cares?", which is unfortunate.

Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011)

7/10
I was a little disappointed, given all the hype, but that's how I felt about The Hangover. And given the similarities between the two, I guess it's not unfitting. Kristen Wiig is great and has to carry the load the entire film, but I was almost disappointed that the movie focused on her as much as it did - I was kind of hoping for more of an ensemble comedy where you got to know the bridesmaids more individually. There are definitely some laugh-out-loud moments, but it can't shake off the shackles of its genre origins - numerous montages, sing-alongs, and a love story ending anyone can see a mile away that sweeps Wiig's characters actual problems (no job, no money, living with her mother, etc) right under the rug. Funny but not entirely satisfying.

Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)

9.5/10
Between this and The Tree of Life, this might be the year of stylistic overload. Drive isn't eye (and ear) candy - it's borderline pornography. And I mean that in a very complimentary way. Every frame in this movie is so slick and stylized, it's pushed almost to the point of absurdity. But there are some self-aware moments too, like when Ryan Gosling offers the kid a toothpick like the one he's chewing on. It's perfect because, when you saw those too-cool celebrities of old days (that Gosling's character is clearly meant to channel) chewing on toothpicks, didn't you always wonder if they kept a stash of them in their breast pocket, or what?
Everything else in this movie is pretty close to perfect too - the soundtrack is stunning, the action breathtaking, the violence gripping, and the acting top notch. The only part of the movie that gnawed on me was the relationship between Gosling and Carey Mulligan's characters - for the sake of the film Gosling needs to be as anonymous as possible, but it seems like a stretch for us to believe that meeting Mulligan and her son was "the best thing that ever happened to them". Especially when their relationship as we see it on screen doesn't appear to be anything extraordinary. But style wins out over substance in the end like it's clearly meant to, and there's enough here to cement it in my mind as one of the year's best to this point.

Simon of the Desert (Luis Bunuel, 1965)

8/10
Not quite a short, not quite a full-length from Luis Bunuel, it clocks in at 45 minutes and I wound up wishing it were longer. It tells the story of Simon, perched high up on a pedestal in worship to God, in the middle of the desert. He interacts with a number of people - priests, peasants, and most frequently Satan, played by Silvia Pinal. It has, of course, a very cynical view of Christianity, but it also has a really smart sense of humor and a brilliant ending that's worth the trip.

Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)

7/10
There's a lot to chew on here, and it's a very multi-layered story, moreso than what I'd expected for Woody Allen (not that I've seen much of his work). While I enjoyed it, I felt it was lacking a certain charm, or something that would really connect me to the characters. The ruminations on relationships, life, death, religion, etc were all interesting, but I was never close to being moved by it or anything.

Four of the Apocalypse (Lucio Fulci, 1975)

5.5/10
Lucio Fulci's 1975 spaghetti western is a wildly uneven affair. It starts out well enough with four individuals (a gambler, a pregnant prostitute, an alcoholic and a man who sees ghosts) travelling together as the last survivors of a bandit attack on their town. It gets even better when Tomas Milian (The Big Gundown, Companeros, etc) shows up as an anti-Christ hippie gunslinger, but when he turns on them and leaves them for dead, he leaves the movie for dead too, because it turns into a crashing bore. Entirely too much time is spent on the prostitute's pregnancy leaving little room for the big revenge scene, which is a major letdown. There's other problems too - a ridiculously ill-fitting folksy soundtrack, a terrible English dub (the original Italian track is on the DVD, but unsubtitled), and some pretty bad acting. There's some flashes to suggest a better movie buried in here, but it's beyond the point of saving.

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

8/10
Andrei Tarkovsky's autobiographical stream-of-conscious film, it's probably as hard as anything to get into, just because of how personal it is. Indeed, the only one who would understand just how everything fits is Tarkovsky himself, the rest of us are on the outside looking in (I could make some flimsy 'mirror' allusion here but alas). Despite the lack of plot or coherance, Tarkovsky is such a magician that it's never a chore to watch what unfolds onscreen, and there are some remarkable images that I won't soon be able to forget.

Earth (Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)

7/10
Silent Soviet flick from 1930, the photography was nice but I found it a struggle to get too interested in the plot (a hostile takeover by technologically-advanced landowners on an older generation of farmers). Historically speaking I'm glad I saw it, but from a personal viewpoint it didn't blow me away.

Senna (Asif Kapadia, 2010)

9/10
It's hard to believe, given Ayrton Senna's lifestory, that no one tried to turn this into a feature film before (instead of a documentary). It's hard to imagine any format besting what Asif Kapadia has done here though. The decision to combine voice-overs with entirely stock/archive footage is both risky and brilliant. The lo-fi fuzzy quality of some of the race footage is in stark contrast to the ultra HD/3D gloss that is so common at the theatres, and I think it does a wonderful job conjuring up some sort of nostalgic feeling in the viewer, even if you'd never heard of Senna outside this film. It was certainly the case for me. Instead of beating you over the head with testimonials to Senna's greatness, Kapadia makes you feel like he was an old friend of yours, and that nobody needed to tell you why he was so good. This nostalgic factor also makes you feel like his triumphs and failures are yours as well. It's an incredible trick and I don't know if I'll find myself feeling quite as much an affinity to a protagonist in another film this year as I did with Senna. Great story and an even better documentary.